Paul Sakoilsky (UK, b1964) was brought up in England and S.E. Asia. His artistic practise ranges from performance, painting, poetry and philosophy to curation, making use of traditional as well as digital media. He was one “of the instigators of East London’s earlier and edgier art scene”, as a curator of live & interdisciplinary art at 30 Underwood St Gallery (Shoreditch) 1994-2002, where he also had his studio. In 1997 he co-curated the Austrian Viennese Actionist, Hermann Nitsch’s first U.K. exhibition, which led to a 26 year relationship with the artist and his work, on whom he has written extensively, going on to perform in many of Nitsch’s large-scale performances. He was a co-founder of the RED Gallery in Shoreditch as artist/curator in residence (2009-2012). His work has been exhibited, performed, and published internationally. Collections: British Council, Tate Britain and internationally in private collections.

 

 

A Paul Sakoilsky Manifesto

by ASID April 2024

 

That I am still alive is a miracle
To know that life intensifies at its edges
Digging into death, ugliness and decay
Expresses nothing less than my unbroken desire to live 

An art that articulates itself as others write manifestos 

The risk of unleashing the will to power
The audacity of intensity 

He does not stand beside his work, it permeates him as it permeates the 

space he enters, dividing opinions with charismatic energy.
No one has an unbiased opinion of Paul Sakoilsky. 

Persistent painterly subversions of everyday events bite
the British consciousness that flows in neutral waters
The absurd is the last adequate way to respond to this world
Rituals merge with performance and poetry, which are not afraid of the 

big questions, but laughingly run away from them again and again 

Painting as the blood of life, vitalized and screaming in pain
The return of the clown, cake and paint dripping, sometimes blood in 

rough quantities, liquid that does not want to be a tear, a laughing 

Zarathustra descending from the peaks of despair 

To be free is to tremble over an abyss
Art as the first possibility to start dancing there
Whose questions rise through a dark, traumatic reality of life into a space

of the sublime; they are not separate from art, but can only be formulated through it 

Art is not an occupation that makes life more beautiful It is what makes 

life beautiful
And gives it the possibility of radical beauty 

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